His appeal was in vain. The Golden Bed, upraised on the shoulders of
four stalwart chiefs, began its triumphal progress up the valley road.
Behind it officiously walked Exploding Eggs, puffed up with
importance, regarded on all sides with respect as _Tueni Oki Kiki_,
Keeper of the Golden Bed, but jostled for position by Apporo, envied
of women. Behind them up the rough road hastened the rest of the
village, eager to see the installation of the marvel in its new
quarters, and I followed the barbaric procession leisurely.

My new residence was a mile from the beach, and off the main
thoroughfare, though this mattered little. The roads built decades
ago by the French are so ruined and neglected that not a thousand
feet of them remain in all the islands. No wheel supports a vehicle,
not even a wheelbarrow. Trails thread the valleys and climb the hills,
and traffic is by horse and human.

My Golden Bed, lurching precariously in the narrow path, led me
through tangled jungle growth to the first sight of my new home, a
small house painted bright blue and roofed with corrugated iron. Set
in the midst of the forest, it was raised from the ground on a
_paepae_, a great platform made of basalt stones, black, smooth
and big, the very flesh of the Marquesas Islands. Every house built
by a native since their time began has been set on a _paepae_, and
mine had been erected in days beyond the memory of any living man.
It was fifty feet broad and as long, raised eight feet from the earth,
which was reached by worn steps.

Above the small blue-walled house the rocky peak of Temetiu rose
steeply, four thousand feet into the air, its lower reaches clothed
in jungle-vines, and trees, its summit dark green under a clear sky,